Poet
and performance artist Miroslav Mandic (b. 1949) has realized a huge and
impressive ten year art project, "The Rose of Wandering - Ten years
of walking across Europe 1991-2001". Mandic took the first step of
"The Rose of Wandering" from William Blake's grave in London
on September 9th 1991. Since then, he has walked 20 kilometers each day
which, in ten years, adds up to about 60,000 kilometers. By doing that,
as he states, he wanted to affirm accomplishment and the supernatural,
to affirm wandering as a method through which a path to poetry and new
sources of beauty could open. By walking in different parts of Europe
he was "drawing" a "blue rose of wandering", a spiritual
sculpture, which is invisible but has influence on people. As he explained,
with his everyday sacrifice he was building a "Monument to the Anonymous
Forces of Love".
Mandic's three basic symbols are the road, the rose, and wandering. He
defines the road as follows: "The road is the largest man-made structure
in this world. Man's greatest achievement. Unlike houses, which eventually
fall into ruins, roads last forever. I have had some little experience
of its tolerance and wisdom. In ten years, I think I shall become an excellent
student of its."
To
Mandic, the rose is: "A world of non-violence. Non-violence takes
the greatest courage of all, and that is why the rose is a hero. I think
of the rose as a future teacher of harmony. The rose is food for the soul."
He
says the following of wandering: "Wandering is inevitable, that is
why I accept it. Wandering is the best way of living and reaching certainty.
The wanderings of "The Rose of Wandering" are dedicated to all
those who have been and still are searching, all those who search and
seek for others.
I
shall wander - because "The Rose of Wandering" is my admiration
of beauty on European ground and it is also the incorporating of that
beauty into Earth's cosmic future - because "The Rose of Wandering"
is for me a mythological journey towards a new form. Ten springs, ten
summers, ten autumns and ten winters - because "The Rose of Wandering"
is a prayer. A prayer to the beauty of the rose, the wisdom of wandering
and the sensuality of wandering."
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